Loss at any cost: Pelosi is a “selfish bitch”

This post is going to be a little different in tone than most of my family-friendly entries. I am ripping pissed off at Democrats and after you read this you will know why.

Liberals want to end this war at all costs, even if it means endangering more American lives. They can’t de-fund the war nor do they have the skills to negotiate a peaceful ending. In fact, nobody possesses those skills. We are fighting pure evil over there.

Yet Pelosi & Company want to pass a non-binding resolution that brings negative attention to possible the most important ally we have in the war on terror: Turkey. The House leadership does not seem to mind doing damage to our relations with the only democratic and secular Muslim state in the region at a crucial time. Although the intended measure is non-binding, and thus it avoids a presidential veto, that does not make it harmless or intelligent.

The proposed legislation is the Armenian Genocide Resolution (H.Res.316). It’s goal? “Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.” At least they are being honest…

Yes, Turkey did bad things to Armenians a long time ago. But I ask the House this: What purpose does this legislation serve? Why now? What will the impact of passing it truly be? Why, with the myriad of other important issues that Congress could be working on, are they trying to push through a resolution that will embarrass and alienate a key ally? Oh, that’s right. They are trying to screw the President at any cost.

Well Speaker Mimi, your pal Barbara Boxer is fond of saying “elections have consequences.” Well, so do votes. This legislation is the consummate example of liberal failure to be accountable for one’s actions. They are so focused on attacking the president that they are willing to make it easier for our enemies to kill our troops. They are willing to create long term problems that affect all Americans for the short term gain of attacking the president. It’s the same mindset that Republicans displayed when attacking President Clinton. This time, instead of griping about the cover up of a blow job we are talking about the lives of thousands of our soldiers, and the overall stability of the Middle East. It is bad, it is unproductive, and it is very dangerous.

HOW CAN THEY NOT REALIZE THE IMPACT OF THIS LEGISLATION?

Look at the map above. Turkey is the big green blob to the left. Iraq is the big red blob below Turkey. To the north and south ofTurkey are the Black and Mediterranean Sea. This is where you usually find things like waves, fishies and big damned American military ships that could remove any country from the map if so inclined.

Now, here is another map that shows how our military planes have to travel around the region. That little place below the name Turkey on the map is Incirlik, a place that we have an important air base in NATO’s Southern Region. To get supplies (such as improved armor) to our troops without access to Turkey we will have to rely on Syria and Iraq to let us use their airspace. Yeah, right. That’s really gonna happen.

Here is an excellent article on Turkey and the potential impact of this resolution. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has decided to bring to a vote a non-binding resolution declaring the events of 1915 in Eastern Anatolia a “genocide.” Despite its moralistic claims, this is a dangerous—indeed, in the present circumstances, a highly irresponsible—assault on U.S. national interests in Iraq and elsewhere. (source)

Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and now George W. Bush all opposed such attempts. The House leadership does not seem to mind doing damage to our relations with the only democratic and secular Muslim state in the region at a crucial time. Although the intended measure is non-binding, and thus it avoids a presidential veto, that does not make it harmless or intelligent. (source)

The administration is trying to kill this legislation before it is too late. President Abdullah Gul of Turkey is telling anyone that will listen that if this is passed it will ireversably change the relationship between Turkey and the US. Here is what the administration is saying:

• “…this resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings, and its passage would do great harm to relations with a key ally in NATO, and to the war on terror.”
• “The passage of this resolution at this time would be very problematic for everything we are trying to do in the Middle East” Condoleesa Rice
• Turkish president, Abdullah Gul, wrote to Bush to thank him for his efforts opposing the resolution and to draw “attention to the problems it would create in bilateral relations if it is accepted.”

Hello… Congress? Please think about this before you cast a vote. There are serious consequences to this bill. Do you really want to cause more troops to die?

Oh yeah… the “selfish bitch” thing? I’m just quoting Joy Behar and her immature comment about Michelle Malkin. Behar is a has-been comedian but seems to represent the ilk that is the liberal left. So, here’s a taste of your own medicine you clueless bitch.

Lost and Found

In March I was robbed. Two saxophones were stolen from the trunk of my car. Yeah, I know… I should not have left them in the trunk; I should have carried them inside when I got home. My hands were full when I walked into the house and I fully intended to go back out and get them, but having two young kids can often be distracting. Needless to say I didn’t make it outside again that evening. The next morning as I walked to my car I noticed that the trunk was partially open. I knew right away that they were gone.

To put this in perspective, these horns are top of the line professional instruments worth thousands of dollars each. I’ve owned each of them for 20 years. Professional musicians become one with their axes like baseball players to their glove or jockeys to their horse. It’s a bond that is hard to explain and is equally hard to break. Think of that NRA “pry it from my cold, dead hands” bumper sticker and you get the point.

The night that they were stolen the theives canvassed our street and painted racist graffiti on some of the brick houses and the sidewalk. I was the only one that lost anything of value. Paint can be removed, but recovering stolen instruments is not so easy.

After completing a police report I blasted emails to my musician network and posted messages on a few web sites including www.saxontheweb.net. Then I printed out a flyer and visited every pawn shop that I could find, about 20 in all. I was absolutely bummed out. My alto is a cream of the crop vintage 1960 Selmer, and my soprano is a fairly limited edition Yamaha that is highly sought out. Also, my father gave me this soprano when I got to college, and he passed away ini 1999. Lots of sentimental value. The thugs had absolutely no idea of the value of their illgotten booty. My fear was that they would be pawned for a hundred bucks, or worse, be recognized as too valuable to sell and then tossed into a dumpster. Either way I expected to never see them again. My wife, known for the occasional premenition, felt differently. She thought that we would get them back.

About two months later I got a phone call from a fellow sax player in town. He said that he thought he found my horn. I gave him my detailed description and serial number and asked to see it. I learned that he heard another guy talking about “finding a saxophone in the road on the south side of town.” He called the guy and it was in fact my horn. I was stoked! Then he told me that it had a dent at the bottom of the body. Oh well, at least I have my alto back. It is the more valuable of the two, financially speaking.

When I got the horn back I saw that there was more damage than I thought. The hardshell case had a dent the size of a quarter at the base, and the energy that created this dent was transferred to the instrument. A saxophone is a highly complex instrument with many rods, keys, springs, and more importantly many properly aligned and spaced tone holes that are closed by precisely aligned pads. Even the smallest air leak out of a closed key makes an instrument not respond properly. My alto was seriously misaligned. The body was not only bent, it was slightly corkscrewed. This pulled the holes away from the keys and made for a very manually intensive repair job. Fortunately I’ve got one of the best repairmen in the business (Ken Beason) and he has repaired my horn. The $700 repair cost is well worth it given the vintage of this sax.

So I got one of my horns back. That is pretty friggin’ incredible. Who woulda thought? Then last Sunday evening I got an email that literally jolted me out of my chair:

From saxontheweb.net: Your post indicates that you had a Yamaha 62R with a serial number of 0319. If that’s so, then it’s being sold by someone on ebay right now.

Holy crap! I ran downstairs, told my wife, and we both grabbed our laptops to log on and see. There were only 33 minutes left in the auction! I freaked… my heart was racing. Do I bid? Do I contact eBay? I called the detective on the case, but it was 11:30 on a Sunday night; there’s no way he will answer. I decided to bid super high on the item to make sure I won and then deal with law enforcement later.

I placed a bid of $5,000, and had another browser window open with an $8,200 bid ready just in case. Sue was ready with a $10,000 bid under her ID just in case someone came in at the last minute. There’s no way we were going to let this slip away. I won the auction with a price of $3,050. Now the fun begins.

I emailed the seller acting as if I didn’t know it was stolen. At this point I didn’t know if the seller was the thief, or just a guy that found it in a pawn shop. Through eBay communication I asked for the sellers address and said that I would be paying with a cashiers check. I also asked if the shipping fee could be waived since I lived in the same city as the seller. The next day he responded he would, but only if I paid via PayPal instead of a cashiers check. I countered with the “I don’t trust PayPal” argument and offered cash. He then asked for my phone number. Hmm…

By this time the detective had finally made contact with me. I called him and told him where we were in the deal and he said I should try to get the sellers phone number so we could track him down. The detective had requested an expedite from eBay to get the seller’s contact info. Anything I could do to find the guy would be quite helpful to the case, since eBay might take a week or so to get the detective the info he needed. It turns out that the seller responded to me outside of eBay and the email address was a fully formatted military address at Lackland Airforce Base. This gave the detective what he needed and the next day he contacted the seller directly to tell him that he had sold a stolen horn.

The seller denied that it was stolen. Then, in a smart move, he called the local police to verify whether or not the detective he spoke with was really a detective. Once this was confirmed he then wanted proof that the horn was in fact mine. Since it was purchased 20 years ago I definitely didn’t have any sort of receipt. Fortunately I gave the serial number of the horn to the detective on the day that we reported the horns stolen. For a moment this wasn’t good enough… apparently non-musicians don’t know that instruments have valid serial numbers. I then described more of the contents of the case as well as the stickers that were on the case. This sealed the deal since they were not shown in the pictures used for the auction.

The detective then learned that the seller bought the horn at a local pawn shop for $100. Seriously… a $3000 instrument for $100. It was pawned the day after it was stolen. The person that pawned it was Jesse Gomez, a thug already wanted for a few crimes. I’m waiting to hear back if this guy gets arrested. If he pawned lots of other stuff they should have enough evidence to launch a thorough investigation on him.

What pisses me off is that it looks like the pawn shop sat on the horn for five months before putting it out for display/sale. Assholes. And, I may have visited the store where it was sold during my initial tour of pawn shops the day after I was robbed. I plan on visiting the store this weekend to see if this is the case.

Ultimately I am a very luck and blessed person. To think that I would get not just one but both of my horns back was unimaginable to me. But my wife was confident that we would get at least one back. She actually had a strong feeling that we would get the soprano back, not the alto. Heck… nobody’s perfect.

Why don’t entertainers just entertain anymore?

Iranian leader/whackjob Mahoud Ahmadinejad (a.k.a. “My Mood, I Wanna Jihad”) spoke today at formerly prestigious Columbia University in New York. The fact that he was granted an audience in the first place is insulting enough, but to hear some of his American supporters sound off is even more disgusting. For example, Dilbert creator Scott Adams had this to say:

Ahmadinejad also called the holocaust a “myth.” Fuck him! A myth is something a society uses to frame their understanding of their world, andact accordingly. It’s not as if the world created a whole new country because of holocaust guilt and gives it a free pass no matter what it does. That’s Iranian crazy talk. Ahmadinejad can blow me.

Holocaust guilt? Um… could that be considered just a little bit anti-semitic? Does the fact that Israel kicked some Palestinian ass in 1967 ring a bell? Does the fact that none of the other Middle Eastern countries offered Palestinians refuge mean anything? Sure, Israel gets a free pass. They get hundreds of them lobbed across their border all of the time. Scott Adams is on crack, or he’s full of himself, or he’s become isolated like John Travolta in that “Boy in a Plastic Bubble” movie from the 70s. He’s entirely out of touch, and I’ve canceled my Dilbert subscription because of his comments. And I really like Dilbert.

I used to enjoy going to movies. I really liked George Clooney. The same for Tom Cruise and a few others out there. But then they had to go off and spout their opinions about how America is the bad guy and the poor suffering Sh’ria following Muslims are the victims. Fuck them. Fuck the Koran, and fuck Hollywood. Except for a couple of movies for my kids I haven’t offered theaters any of my money since 9/11. Hollywood is the Land of the Lost.

The same could be said for most of the music industry. Lots of liberal jazz musicians in New York think Bush is Satan. Plenty of rockers and rappers think that Conservatives are a bunch of fanatical Bible thumpers that want to convert everyone to Christianity or kill them if they don’t. Ironically, the Muslims these wackos support are the ones that kill non-believers. Yet they think America is the bad guy.

Fuck them. Fuck Hollywood and fuck these liberal ass hats.